On 2/12/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I don't see any reason not to allow that. The point of the "no patent-encumbered formats" restriction, as far as I understand it, is to keep all our content available in fully free formats for both viewing and editing. *Also* providing a video in MPEG-4 doesn't make the Theora version any less free or available.
But unless we were to generate the proprietary formats with server side transcoding there would be no way to ensure that the open codec formats were always available and the preferred form for editing... and I'm pretty confident that the use of non-free software for the Wikipedia backend is still out of the question.
That said, I don't know that I agree with your argument that providing an mpeg-4 version doesn't make the the free version less available: So long as the mpeg-4 format is more widely supported (and I don't know that it really is by that wide a margin, one thing I've learned is that peoples guesses are often wrong... but if it's not the discussion is moot) then people will preferentially transfer and share in that format. Just because Wikipedia is carrying both formats doesn't mean the downstream will do so... Sure, downstream can always transcode themselves, but that still leaves us in a position to decide downstream must do less work to distribute in the freedom deprived formats, or more work if they wish to offer those formats.
I don't feel confident that it would be legal to distribute typical copyleft licensed content in an unfree format... As I expressed previously, I'm pretty unhappy about the idea the content I created being distributed in these formats.
Even if we ignore all the other issues, we're still left with the fact that the Wikimedia foundation's intended uses almost certainly fall under the criteria that the the patent holders of these formats believe they are entitled to extract per-download fees on (especially in the case of mpeg4). Now, the question of do they really have a leg to stand on is a separate matter, but can count on a dispute being costly either way... We can already see how this is panning out in the industry: Everyone of substantial size pays the protection fee.
Generally the enforcement (and licensing costs) of this stuff is tuned to keep the economics in favor of supporting the proprietary formats and avoiding the push to free formats. If the licensors were to make too much of a nuisance of themselves, the public would take the one time change out cost to switch entirely to free formats and the licensors would lose out massively while the public would benefit greatly so the situation remains carefully controlled.
The existence of Vorbis itself demonstrates this dynamic: the not insubstantial cost to create Vorbis was primarily covered by an internet content distribution house who never actually switched to it. The mere existence of a viable free alternative changed the balance away from Thompson enough to easily justify the cost.
The preservation of these costly (to society) proprietary formats is possible because the primary decision makers in this grand game are obligated to maximize profits above all other motives, this provides a knob hook for the patent holders to tweak to keep the situation under their control.
Wikipedia, on the other hand, is chartered to provide Free content. Our duty, ultimately, it to maximize long term public good even at the expense of short term popularity or convenience (and it isn't at all clear that we are even giving up anything there with the decision to only use free formats). There is, quite frankly, no good reason for us to feel compelled by the limited advantages of the proprietary formats... but the existence or lack of advantages shouldn't be our motivator in this decision, the utter incompatibility of proprietary and encumbered with our fundamental goals should.